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Global cabling market 2016

BSRIA's market intelligence study shows that the global structured cabling market grew slightly in 2016 after a decline of almost 3% in 2015 due to the effect of the strong US dollar.

Cabling installed in data centres performed better than the Local Area Network (LAN) market, growing by 1.9% compared to a flat (0.2%) LAN segment. The market share of cabling installed in data centres remained in line with 2014 and 2015 at 20%, with 80% being installed in LAN applications.

“The forecast for 2017-2018 is positive with expected market growth of just over 3% each year, followed by a dip in 2019. LAN is expected to grow by almost three per cent in 2017 and 2018, which cabling installed in data centres should increase by 4-5% per cent in 2018 and 2019.

"The commoditisation of cabling with increasing sales of solutions sold by low costsupplier and distributors’ private labels continued in 2016. The low cost solutions mainly operate in the Cat 5e and Cat 6 day-to-day and small project segment, but some are increasingly focusing on Cat 6A and fibre products and larger projects.

"Sales of Cat 6A have increased and accounted for 19% of all cabling systems by volume in 2016. The uptake of Cat 6A solutions is highest in Europe and the Middle East, but measured in cabling installed Europe accounts for 55% followed by 20% in Asia Pacific, 18% in the Americas and 8% in Middle East. Cat 5e is still very much sold in Asia Pacific with over half of all cables shipped followed by Americas with a third.

"The share of fibre, primarily fibre connectivity continue to increase and accounts for 73% of the cabling installed in data centres. Most of the hyperscale data centres are 90-100% fibre and both medium and large data centres is seeing an increase in use of fibre. Single-mode (SM) is increasing, but sales are still low compared to multi-mode. However, a few hyperscale DCs have specified SM as their main cabling type. Copper cabling is mainly installed in computer rooms and small data centres.”

The World Excel Overview provides information on market size, historic data and forecast segmented by product type (data centre vs LAN, copper and fibre, cable and connectivity, categories, pre-terminated fibre (MPOs/MTPs) and sales by supplier. It also includes a summary with key numbers and trends as well as an overview of the top 12 suppliers by product area and region.

The country reports include detailed information about the market overall, LAN vs data centres, trends, forecast, key suppliers, segmentation by product type and channel to market.